Face it, the whole thing about cruising, boat buying, and building budgets are pretty much a confusing mess. You often find one guy who thinks a $250,000 boat is "cheap" discussing budgets with someone who wishes he could afford a $25,000 boat... How exactly can you bridge that sort of gap?
You can't... It's just not possible and even trying to will simply make your head explode. Trust me, it is really something best avoided...
So, since you can't really compare boats in general, the only way to make it work is to ignore whatever is not in your selected subset. Which, in today's world means, more than likely, you'll be starting with price.
The other day I was looking at a Catalina 36 which was selling for $36K and it was a very nice boat of the turnkey ready to go cruising variety. I mention this because it was a lot of bang for the buck but still maybe a bit expensive for many interested in the whole VolksCruiser idea. The one thing special about this boat is that it did not require an expensive refit or expensive toys to take you where you want to go and get gone.
So, we'll do what everyone does and pull this number out of the proverbial hat and use it to define the top end of the VolksCruiser price range at $1000 a foot 97% ready to go.
There is a local Ericson 27 in pretty much the same condition, extremely well equipped, and as turnkey as you can get selling for $17K (say $630 a foot). There was also the CAL 27 I missed buying that sold for $4,800. ($178 a foot) but, more than likely, would have needed some money and sweat equity to bring it up to ready to sail off into the sunset condition (let's peg that as an additional $1000 bringing its per foot price to about $215).
Realistically I'd say that $200 is as low per foot as you're likely to find a ready to go cruising boat. So, we'll give the sorta/kinda answer to what a VolksCruiser costs at somewhere between $200 and $1000 dollars a foot.
Now, I'm well aware that a lot of folks currently reading this are currently trying to make sense of these numbers because they fly in the face of everything you've been told, while others are trying to figure out how they can make a Halberg Rassy or Swan fit into those numbers... I'll give you some time.
Tomorrow we'll get into some higher math on the subject...
